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hacked?

i own a dell system (poor me) that is connected to the net via a cable modem. lately i have noticed that it is considerably slower than when I first got hooked up. At first I thought it was due to so much info in the hard drive that when i tried to access a web page the computer was serching it's memory for recent info from that page. After dumping all stored info, it was still slow. A friend told me that it is real easy to hack a cable connected system, and i should disconnect the modem power source at night, having done this and reconnecting in the morning, wow what a difference. for about two or three minutes, then right back to crazy slow. any ideas? I feel like Im back to a dial up connection again. Is there anyway to find out who (if any) has been into my system?

i do run norton, 2001 and it's updated every 48 hrs. I am new to the cp world. the last time i had a keyboard in front of me, the Commodore 64 was huge and the tandy trs80 was my favorite toy. Lots has changed since then. Antionline forums have pointed me to alot of stuff like zone alarm etc. I have tried to install zone alarm but it keeps failing. currently reading a Samspade.org article that says it's crap anyways so back to square one. Have I been hacked? Or is my isp just turning the volume down?

it's hard 2 figure out where to start..
From your post it appears your using a micro$oft OS (which version?), the best start would be to back up your data & re-install from scratch (if you have been compromised then anything could be lurking on your machine) and this could also cause problems trying to identify what’s going on.
After a clean re-install (from CD media not from local copy if possible) then install anti-virus s/w then a personal firewall (limited protection but better than nothing)
If you do this you will minimise the potential from abuse, it may also be a good time to look at a hardware firewall (such as the Linksys router / firewall).

There is nothin wrong with ZOnealarm, Tooleaky has proven a vulnerability but that has nothing to do with the firewall but with M$.
They need to fix the problem, besides chances that a trojan can bypass yer firewall without being detected earlier by Norton (that is if you aint using an outdated version) are small.

all I can say is that if you are not running a firewall then you did get hacked. My recommendation is to back up only important files that you need and format and do a clean install. before you hook it back up to the net install ZA and a virus scan with the newest updates.

You could also try and do defrag.

[gloworange]\"A hacker is someone who has a passion for technology, someone who is possessed by a desire to figure out how things work.\" [/gloworange]

i tried to defrag, would not pass 1 %. did some internal surfin, found "js exploit" in my ie5 files. i've deleted tsaid exploit and lifeapears normal. I will know more as time passes. Thanks for everyone's help and advice it's amazing how fast you guys responded. Nice to know that in the " cold and impersonal misinformation highway" there are groups such as yourselves to help us newbies out.
CHEERS TO Y'ALL

check w/your cable provider as well... I used RoadRunner in northern VA, they (of course) oversold subsriptions, and the network suffered. Packet loss was up around 5-6% during peak hours... I got about 5-10k a sec downloads.

you should run a tracert to yahoo.com or some other external site, and check the latency @ each hop. If the hop is internal to your cable providers network, then that is your problem.

keep your virus software up to date, don't run any executable attachments, and don't run any servers on your machine, you should be in pretty good shape.

yeah... as a cable modem user, your system will run slower at different times of day, depepnding on how many people are online. if they don't have enough servers or enough bandwidth, your connection will suffer.